“Beware, RedFlex may be coming after you and you could potentially wind up in court,” City Council member Ken Sanchez said.

Drivers may have thought they were off the hook after the city put the brakes on its contract with RedFlex, the company that owned and operated the cameras. But there’s $13 million in unpaid fines on the line, and that’s not money RedFlex is willing to pass up.

Sanchez said RedFlex threatened to sue the city at first to get the money back.

“We didn't want to see the taxpayers of this community to have to pay for these fines of these violators,” Sanchez said.

Instead, Target 7 discovered the city recently settled with RedFlex. The deal stated that the city and taxpayers won’t be liable for millions in unpaid fees. In exchange, RedFlex will be allowed to file lawsuits against certain violators.

“We gave over the rights, the ability for RedFlex to collect all the fees moving forward,” City Council member Dan Lewis said.

A metro court spokesperson said right now they handle around 120,000 cases a year. RedFlex wouldn’t comment on how many lawsuits the company plans to file or how many violations a driver needs to have to land in court in the first place.

Sanchez said he’s worried the system could get clogged if RedFlex files tens of thousands of cases because there are 90,000 unpaid citations.

However, there’s no way RedFlex can make any money by going after violators with only one citation because the cost to file the lawsuit alone would make it impractical. But that won’t stop a third-party creditor from trying to scare violators into paying past-due fines.

Since RedFlex wouldn’t answer Target 7's questions, we called the creditors. Currently, they are calling 53,000 in Albuquerque to try to recoup that money.

When RedFlex collects the money for a ticket, the company will take its share and then split the rest between the city and state.